Sous Vide Times and Temperatures Explained

Almost every sous vide chart online presents time and temperature as a single pair of numbers to copy, which hides the fact that they control completely different things. Once you understand the split, charts become a convenience rather than a necessity, and you can reason about a cut nobody wrote a chart for.

A note on how to use this page: we give you the principles and point you to tested tables for the specific numbers. We are countertop-cooking enthusiasts, not a food-safety laboratory, and pasteurization figures are exactly the place where you should be reading a primary source rather than a buying guide. Our method is on how we review.

Temperature sets doneness — and that is all it sets

This is the foundational idea of the whole technique. In a sous vide bath, food asymptotically approaches the water temperature and physically cannot exceed it. So the temperature you dial in is the final internal temperature of the food.

That is why there is no carryover to guess at, no window to catch, and no gray overcooked band under the surface — the failure mode of a pan-seared steak, where the outer layers hit 160°F and beyond while you wait for the middle to come up.

It also means the temperature dial is a doneness dial, directly. Want it a little more done? Add two degrees. There is no interpretation required, and this is why sous vide is the most repeatable cooking method there is.

Time sets texture — and it is driven by thickness

Time does two jobs, and neither of them is doneness.

The first is simply getting the middle up to temperature, and that is a function of thickness, not weight. A 1-inch steak and a 2-inch steak of the same total weight need very different times, because heat travels inward from all surfaces and the distance to the center is what matters. This is the single most common charting mistake — people look up "steak" rather than "1.5-inch steak."

The second job is texture. Held for hours, collagen in connective tissue slowly converts to gelatin, which is what turns a tough cut tender without shredding it. This is why short rib is cooked for 24 to 72 hours at a temperature that would be medium-rare in a steak: the temperature keeps it pink and the time makes it tender. No other method separates those two variables.

The corollary is the famous forgiveness of sous vide: a steak that needs an hour is genuinely fine at ninety minutes, because doneness is locked by temperature. Leave it for six hours and it will still be medium-rare, but the texture will have gone soft and slightly mealy. That is the outer limit, and it is a texture failure rather than an overcooking one.

Pasteurization: why chicken can be cooked lower

The idea people find hardest to accept, and the one worth understanding properly because it is the source of most sous vide anxiety.

Food safety is not a temperature threshold. It is a temperature-and-time relationship: pathogens are reduced by a given factor faster at higher temperatures and slower at lower ones. The familiar "cook chicken to 165°F" figure is the temperature at which that reduction is effectively instantaneous — which is convenient for an oven, where you cannot hold a precise temperature for a controlled duration.

A circulator can. Holding chicken at a lower temperature for long enough achieves the same pasteurization, which is exactly why sous vide chicken breast is juicy rather than dry — you are not overshooting to guarantee safety. The same logic underlies sous vide eggs and low-temperature pork.

This is the part to look up rather than estimate.Both Anova and Breville build tested time-and-temperature guides into their apps — Breville's listing describes Cook Guides with presets tested by its test kitchen — and the USDA publishes the underlying safety guidance. Use those. A guide page is the wrong place to get a pasteurization number, including this one.

Four rules that replace most of a chart

1. Look up thickness, not weight. Measure the thickest part of the piece. Doubling thickness roughly quadruples the time to core temperature.
2. Longer is safe for doneness, risky for texture. Overshooting a time by 50% is almost always fine. Overshooting by 500% will turn the texture soft.
3. Tender cuts want short times, tough cuts want long ones. A fillet needs only to reach temperature. A shin or a shoulder needs hours of collagen conversion.
4. From frozen, add roughly 50% to the time.You do not need to thaw first — in fact cooking from frozen is one of sous vide's genuine conveniences.

Four timing mistakes people make

Using a chart written for a different thickness. Covered above, and it is the commonest one by far.

Starting the timer before the bath is up to temperature. The cook time begins when the water reaches your target, not when you press start. Most machines will notify you; wait for it.

Overlapping or floating bags. If bags touch or float, parts of the food are not in circulating water and the timing no longer applies. Weight the bags down with a plate or a heavy spoon, and give each one room.

Forgetting evaporation on long cooks.Over 24 hours an uncovered bath can drop below the machine's minimum water line and shut off. A lid, foil, or ping-pong balls prevents it — and reduces running cost, since the element fires less often.

How the main food groups behave

Rather than reproduce a chart, here is how each category responds — which is what lets you reason about something you have no chart for.

Tender red meat(steak, lamb chops, fillet). Temperature is everything, time is just "long enough to reach the middle." These have little connective tissue, so extra hours do nothing good and eventually soften the texture.

Tough cuts (short rib, brisket, shin, shoulder). Temperature keeps them pink; time — 24 to 72 hours — converts collagen to gelatin. This is the combination no other method achieves, and it is why sous vide short rib is a signature dish of the technique.

Poultry. The category where the time-and-temperature safety relationship does real work, and where you should use tested tables rather than reasoning from principles. The payoff is the biggest of any food: chicken breast that is genuinely juicy.

Fish. Fast and unforgiving in a different way — the flesh becomes very soft over long holds, so this is the one category where overshooting the time is a real problem rather than a mild one. Treat fish timings as ceilings, not suggestions.

Eggs. Pure temperature control, and the thing no other method can do — holding an egg at a precise temperature for an hour produces textures a hob cannot reproduce.

Vegetables. The awkward one. Plant cell walls need higher temperatures than meat to break down — well above where most sous vide cooking happens — so vegetables are cooked hot and separately, or better, in an air fryer.

The step no chart includes

Time and temperature get you a perfectly cooked interior and nothing else. Water cannot brown, because the Maillard reaction needs temperatures well above the boiling point and a bath tops out around 195°F.

So every meat cook ends with a hard sear — a screaming-hot cast-iron pan for about a minute a side, or a torch. And the one instruction that matters most: dry the surface completely with kitchen paper before searing. A wet surface steams instead of browning, and that single mistake accounts for most disappointing first attempts. Keep the sear short so you do not cook a gray band into the meat you just spent hours avoiding.

Where to get the actual numbers

Three good sources, in order of convenience. The guides built into your app — Breville's Cook Guides are tested by its test kitchen, and Anova's app carries equivalents; both are free to use for cooking. The USDA tablesfor the underlying safety guidance. And the manufacturer's own documentation for your specific machine.

If you are still choosing a circulator, the software difference matters here more than the hardware: the Joule Turbo lets you pick doneness from pictures rather than numbers, which is the friendliest way in for a beginner, while the Anova Precision Cooker gives you on-unit control. We compare them in Anova vs. Joule, and if the technique is new, what is sous vide walks through a first cook step by step.